Yvonne continues to impress with this selection
After an incredible year that saw her reach career highs in points, rebounds, shooting efficiency, and receive multiple awards (I promise, her season review is coming!), Yvonne Ejim has reached another milestone: selection to the Canadian Olympic basketball team.
Yvonne Ejim is an Olympian pic.twitter.com/3OvEUOvS5L
— Gonzaga Women’s Basketball (@ZagWBB) July 2, 2024
Yvonne has featured in two tournaments thus far for the Canucks with her first being the 2023 AmeriCup (championship for teams of the Americas) one year ago and the second being the Olympic Qualifying Tournament that took place this past February.
In her first appearance for the national team, she helped her team win the bronze medal as she averaged 16.7 minutes, 7.9 points on 20-29 shooting, and 4.3 rebounds in seven games. Her best game would come against the eventual fourth place team, Puerto Rico, in the group stages when she scored 12 points, grabbed 7 rebounds, and created 3 assists with just 1 turnover in 23 minutes.
She didn’t feature much in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament as she only played a little over 7 minutes as players during which time she only contributed 1 steal to the boxscore. This limited playing time could have been influenced by the pressure of this competition, by qualifying the Canadian Women will be appearing in their fourth consecutive Olympics appearance and just eighth all-time, and the fact that Yvonne needed to arrive late to the Tournament due to her Gonzaga duties, something apparently agreed upon between the school and the Canadian Basketball Association.
I’m hoping that Ejim gets more playing time in the Olympics after having more time to work with her teammates and coaches, but we should keep our expectations for her to reach that or below her participation in the AmeriCup given the depth chart for Team Canada. Ahead of her on the depth chart are Kayla Alexander and Aaliyah Edwards.
Alexander is a 6’4” center that was drafted 8th overall in the 2013 WNBA Draft and played for eight seasons in the league before moving overseas. This past season, Kayla played for the French team Tango Bourges Basket where she averaged 13.8 points on 56% shooting, 10.3 rebounds including 5 offensive rebounds per game, and a team-high efficiency rating of 20.2 in the EuroCup Women, which is the second-tier intercontinental championship in Europe (think Euro League if you watch soccer). This off-season, she moved to Valencia Basket in Spain, a team that finished second in this past season’s Spanish League and fifth in the EuroLeague Women group.
Aaliyah Edwards is a 22 year-old 6’3” forward that just made the jump from starting forward at UConn to the WNBA as she was drafted sixth overall by the Washington Mystics. After averaging 17.6 points on 59.3% shooting, 9.2 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1.7 steals, and 1 block per game in her final college season, Edwards is already establishing herself in the league as evidenced by her season average of 8.6 points, 6 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.7 steal, and 0.9 block in her first 19 WNBA games. Despite her age, this will actually be Aaliyah’s second Olympics as she was selected for the 2020 competition, although she only featured in two games for mop-up time.
One really cool thing about Ejim getting selected for this roster is that she will actually get to play along her brother, Melvin Ejim. The 33 year old 6’6” wingman currently plies his trade in Spain for Unicaja Malaga, a team that just finished top of the table in the first division league ahead of Real Madrid. He has featured for his nation on several occasions after first being called up in 2015 for the Pan American Hames and will likely play a moderate role for a team featuring the likes of NBA talent such as Andrew Nembhard, Kelly Olynyk, SGA, Jamal Murray, Luguentz Dort, Dillion Brooks, and Dwight Powell. It has to be surreal to both represent your national team on a stage like the Olympics and do so side by side with your sibling.
The Olympic Women’s Basketball Tournament will stretch from July 27th to August 11th with Canada’s first game coming against France on July 29th at 11:15am ET. The betting odds place the Canucks at +3,500 to win, which ranks them seventh and tied with Spain. The team been placed in a fairly tough group that features France and Australia, two teams tied for third with betting odds of +2500 to win it all so let’s hope the team can escape the group stage to make a run for it all with Ejim featuring a more prominent role than the qualifiers.